 for anyone who's really interested. It happens, let me tell you, like I had a local historic district meeting only this week or last week and it's like in five days there was already 20 something views. And I was like, oh wow, you know, there's a few people in the audience, but it's amazing that then it's been viewed 2,000 times in like three days. I think it's, I think it's you, Nate. Everyone just wants to see you. Yeah, I hear name always back. Right, missed that guy. That's great. So there's 10 people here. Oh, Beth, yeah, I'll make you a call. I guess I haven't done that. Oh, I don't think you need to. Oh, to... Just in case, you know, anything happens, you can allow attendees to speak or share screen or other things. Okay, great. All right. Well, we will bring the meeting to order then it is 7.07 and seen as a quorum of committee members is in attendance. This public meeting is being called to order. So I welcome everybody to the January 10th, 2023 public hearing or public meeting. I should say that Amherst Community Development Block Grant Advisory Committee pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and extended by the state legislature on July 16th of 2022. This meeting is being conducted virtually using the Zoom platform. The meeting is being recorded and minutes are being taken as usual. But now I'm gonna do a roll call of those in attendance. And actually when I call on you, why don't you also introduce yourself and how long you've been on the committee and I'll start first with Nat. Yes, I'm Nat Larson. I think I've been on the committee. I'm just guessing now maybe five years and so it's always been a pleasure. Many of the same applicants submitting proposals and it's always good to hear all the good work that everyone is doing. Thank you. And Greg? Immute, Greg. Is that better? Yes. Hi, my name is Greg Baskham and this is my first year on the committee. Thank you. And Suzanne? Hi, Suzanne Schilling and also my first year on the committee. Everybody knows you, but I'll let you introduce yourself too. Sorry, me? Yeah. Sorry, I was just watching the attendees. Sorry, Nate Molloy, a planner with the town. I'm staff liaison to the committee. Thank you. And I'm Becky Michaels. I've been on the committee for two years and I am the chair, the recent chair taken over for Gale. So this is my first round cheering this particular meeting where we're making these kinds of decisions. And so welcome everybody who's in attendance and thank you to my fellow board members for being here. The meeting format tonight, the purpose of tonight's meeting is for us to decide which organizations to recommend to and which non-social service entities to recommend or projects to recommend to the town manager for use using the community development block grants and then also to recommend the amount that we should give to each of those organizations. The way that we're going to format the meeting is that we're first going to start and do a discussion about the non-social service organizations. We're then going to discuss the social service organizations. And throughout that time, there may be questions that arise in our committee discussion where we may ask if there is a representative from the organization present to join us in the panel area to talk to us to explain certain parts of the application or questions that we have. And I'm thrilled to say that we are actually able to have you come in as a panelist and so we can actually see you in the past. It was just seeing your photographs. But if you are comfortable being on screen and live and in person, that would be great. And if not, that's your call, just don't turn your video on. But hopefully, we'll be able to have a conversation with you, speaking to the audience. What we are planning to do this is a public meeting, not a public hearing. So we are all here really to talk amongst ourselves about what to do, but looking for, as I said, to turn to the audience members where we have questions. And I wanna assure the audience members that we are a group that has poured through your applications and really read them very carefully. We understand as best as we think we can what it is that you're looking for the grants to do. We also have an understanding of what your organizations do, both from your grants but also as community members in Amherst. And I'll just say at the outset that every single application we got is from an organization that really does extraordinary work. And the task that we have tonight can feel sort of impossible. And I remember from last year, sort of talking about how do you rank housing over eating, over, I mean, it's just these questions that are beyond anything that we could try to answer. And so that we understand that each one of you does really incredible and important work. And so what we're gonna ask of you is to really answer our questions more than to make presentations about your organizations. That said, at the close of our discussion when we have come up with a consensus, we will open the floor if people do want to make some comments. Again, we really would ask you to focus if you think that there's an area that we missed that we didn't understand from your application. And we will limit everybody to three minutes per organization in that period of time. And then after that, we'll then move into the discussion about the budget specifically. And then I think at the conclusion, we then have a couple of other business items around target areas and anything that we were unaware of before the agenda was posted. So with that said, I think we'll get our discussion started around the non-social service organizations. And I'm assuming all committee members have a copy of the preliminary proposal rankings that just had the rankings that we had sent in to Nate to compile. And so one of the ways to get this started is to, I mean, we're sort of fortunate in this matter in that we can only give to three non-social service organizations and we only got three non-social service organization applications. So the question is really, do we give to all three or do we focus on just one or two of them? And I actually do have a question. I don't know whether there's anybody here from Valley CDC, Nate, do you? There is, yeah. There is, okay. Because I actually did have a question about that. And before we invite the representative in, we can talk amongst ourselves a little bit. But the question that I have just to my fellow committee members is that I did learn from Nate yesterday that there were some funds that had to be returned to Valley CDC because there were not enough businesses that had applied to use those funds. And it's for similar projects or same projects that they're applying for now. So I was going to ask Valley CDC about the fact that we just returned monies to them and sort of what's different now and why more money would be needed for the same kinds of projects. And I don't know if anybody else has any other questions around that or even wants to discuss it before we call somebody in. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to say I like the Valley CDC proposal. I think we've talked as a committee, one of the things that we wanted to think about as an overlay on a lot of these proposals, especially the social service ones, are kind of racial equity and less represented groups and so forth. And so I think that the Valley CDC kind of target business person, I think is often a less represented business person in town. And so I think that that's a great way to kind of look at that overlay of social justice in the context of the non-social service projects. I agree. So why don't we invite in the representative so we could just sort of talk a little bit about the money piece of it and understand that better. Sure, so. Hi, Alexis. Hi, oh, great. We can hear you perfect. Thank you for coming in and I don't mean to suddenly put you on the spot with this question, but it was a very expected question. Oh, good. Okay. Totally reasonable. So for folks who don't know me, and I will also, so, okay. So first of all, I'm Alexis Breitniker. I'm the executive director at Valley Community Development. I've only been with the organization for a year. Iad Salha is also on the Zoom and he is actually one of our small business. We have two folks in small business, Sarah Sargent, who's on maternity leave and Iad, who just started with us in October. So if there's anything that I can't answer more specifics about the small business program, Iad certainly can answer them for you. And Nate, you know this, I think probably better than I do because you have more tenure than I do with the program. My understanding in part about having to give some money back is because all of the COVID emergency funding that we received from the town of Amherst, we had to attend to it first and it's sort of like backlogged our ability to spend down CDBG funding. A similar thing happened with us in Northampton as well. You know, there was this massive influx of COVID emergency grant funding that was targeted to small businesses. We gave out something like 1.2 million between Northampton, Eastampton, Amherst and Southwick and Pelham. And so the attention was really on those and then we got through all of that money and then we're like, oh, we have this like regular money from CDBG that we have to spend down and we just couldn't quite get through it. So Nate, you can correct me if I miss anything about that. No, I think I said, I mean, I think when I was speaking with Becky, you know, the town we did through with Valley try to reach out to as many businesses as we could and sometimes the businesses are reluctant to come forward. And so even if there are, you know, hundreds of businesses in Amherst that may be eligible, not all of those were willing to come forward. And so, you know, block grant does require more paperwork and, you know, income eligibility requirements than say ARPA funding or other funding that's been available. So, you know, I think it's been, you know, I think statewide we found that the microenterprise program and minister with block grant money was slower to get out and, you know, had more, you know, say threshold barriers for businesses. And so they were reluctant to use the funding. But Becky, to your sort of like overarching question of like, why are we asking for money again? It's in part because we didn't wanna just drop off the radar. So if we didn't ask for money, we felt like we wouldn't be able to really dig in and Amherst in a way that we could. So we have CDBG funding currently from Northampton and we get mass growth capital funding to do like sort of larger small business work in all of Hampshire County. But, you know, it isn't targeted to Amherst and we think that that's an incredibly important community. It's an incredibly important small business community. And so we wanted to keep our foot in the door quite honestly and didn't wanna just pull ourselves out from two years of funding. Okay. Well, and it sounds like also, I mean, if a new business comes along in the next couple of years, it wouldn't have, I mean, the monies that were given back wouldn't have been applicable to it anyway. So it's really, really talking about future development, right? Okay. And this is, you know, it's two years, it's really 15,000 a year, which we feel like sort of is in line and the numbers that we proposed, the number of businesses that we've proposed meeting, we think we can meet those targets. Okay. Does any other board member have any questions for Alexis? Okay, great. Thank you so much, Alexis. Of course, yeah. I'm gonna change your role back, Alexis, to an attendee if that's all right. So I do see board members that Dave, Ziamek is here as well. If anybody has any questions about either the Southeast Street project or the Belcher Town Road project. And my understanding as we look at all of these is that with the Southeast project, because it's a smaller project, well, let me rephrase it, but if we're thinking about sort of percentages or amounts to give to each one, there's less to reduce in that one and less kind of room to do less of it because it's a smaller project versus the Belcher Town Road project, which is a much more extensive project and where things could be sort of taken out of it. And if I'm incorrect about that, then well, Nate, you'll let me know. Yeah, I think that's correct. Yeah, so we have to build up to the budget, right? So we have about 1.1 million. So not every budget fits neatly into that amount. So we have to make some recommendations and cut some budgets. And so it'd be hard, for instance, on the Southeast Street project to recommend 150,000 and then the rest go to Belcher Town Road and then Valley because 150,000 just isn't going to provide, we could scale it down a lot then, right? We do the fencing or something, but it wouldn't be much of what was proposed. Whereas on Belcher Town Road, it's a $2.5 million project. The town has secured 755,000 in massworks funding. We've applied for other funding and we'll put in local capital money in chapter 90. So we're building up that budget now. And so it's a little more flexible in terms of if it's reduced a bit. So in my very simplistic look at this, I guess I thought, well, if we give 30,000 to Valley CDC, then if we just take the remainder and divide it up proportionally, the larger project is about 60% of the total, 1.655. So is it, if we just split it 60, 40, is that a reasonable way to approach it? It could be. Do you have those numbers? I can share my screen, I have a spreadsheet up. And so we can- Yeah, so the way I looked at it was just deducting the 30,000 leaves us with 101 million. 42,500. And if we just split it 60, 40, then it comes out to, oh, I can't see my screen. Oh, sorry, did I? No, no, no, this guy, I took the, I don't mind that a bit. So then it comes out to 625.50 and 417. Yeah, let's do round numbers quickly. I mean, since it's all going to the town of Amherst, and this is the amount we have, so it's clearly going to go to it, I guess I would almost turn to the town and say, what's easiest for you? I mean, if we look at what our voting was, the Southeast Street project certainly had more, more people felt that it was a more important project than the Belcher Town Road one. So my inclination looking at that would be to say, let's fund that entire project, and then the remainder would all go to Belcher Town Road. What do people think about that? Yeah, Becky, I mean, I kind of, I just did the math on who ranked what, gave point basically assignments to everyone who ranked, first, second, third, and came up with a point value basically for each project. So I'm kind of in line with you since if, if the Southeast Street had the highest ranking among everybody, I would feel more inclined that that I would want to give more of the percentage, like somehow weight that percentage higher to fund closer to the total amount of that project. And then since we can fund three, I think the 30,000 is kind of fair since it's such a small number compared to the $1 million number. But I guess I have also a similar question to you about since the other two projects are Town of Amherst, can we allow them to decide that allocation or we have to say what we're funding for each project? I have a question and I had comments. So yeah, so yeah, so we've never really been in this position where we, maybe you could leave it up to the town. And so maybe that there isn't such a strict recommendation. However, like Becky said, it seemed like the way the rankings worked, Southeast Street was more favorable. So maybe if it's not a dollar figure that put as much money as needed into Southeast, Southeast Street and the remainder into Belcher Town Road, it could be something like that. When we apply for funding to the state, it has to be project and budget specific. But if in the future, if depending on how bidding works or whatever, we can move money between the projects. And so it could be that we allocate 600,000 to Southeast Street and the remainder to Route 9. But if we need to move some funds around between the two to make the projects happen, we could do that. Of course, I'm also mindful of the fact that whatever we say, it's just a recommendation. So the town manager can always say, well, from the town perspective, you don't want to put more money towards one or the other, but- Right, right. Well, I think I'd be inclined to do it that, I mean, to say, to sort of phrase it in that way and to put the 655 toward Southeast Street, the rest of it will go to Belcher Town Road, but knowing that whatever needs to happen, if money needs to be shifted around when the projects are being built, then are constructed, that's what will happen. I mean, doesn't seem like we should spend too much time figuring out the specific dollar amounts, right? In the end, it's going to boost your project capacity. Right, and no matter what, we're not gonna be able to give the 1 million to the Belcher Town Road. Correct. Yeah. Unless we said nothing to Southeast Street, if we said- Nothing to anyone, yeah, right. Right, but we're not gonna do that. So, all right, well, then in that case, I guess what we should do, just sort of to go back to my original piece where I said after the discussion, we would allow the organization representatives to chime in if they wanted or had anything to add. I would just turn to Dave in the audience and see if he wants, raise his hand if he wants to come in. And if not, then propose that we can go ahead and reach our consensus vote on this. I can't see the participants anymore. Yeah, okay, yeah, there's still 11 attendees and Dave hasn't raised his hand, so. Okay, so then, Nate, do we need to do an official vote or we can just literally just say- I mean, I think at the end, we could just, we could take one official vote voting all the recommendations. If it seems like the evening's getting late or the committee can't necessarily pin down recommendations for social services, we could always go back and say, here's our, at least our recommendations for the non-social services, so. Oh, it looks like he's raising his hand now. All right, Dave, you're gonna be asked to become a panelist and then you can join. Hello, everyone, can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Good, I'll be very brief. I'll be very brief. Thanks for bringing me in as a panelist. But no, I was listening to your conversation just now and I think that sounds like a really good approach. I just wanted to put a plug in, working with Nate and working with the town manager and our DPW and the planning department, we're really excited about these projects in the East Village. We know the town has selected the Fort River School site. We have the Wayfinders project coming in at the old East Street School. And then our project, that project also has a site on Belcher Town Road. And I think when you travel through the East Village, you realize it's an area that needs a lot of attention from sidewalks to paving to streetscape and the list goes on. So as Nate said, we've begun to amass a number of grant dollars and chapter 90 money and other funds. So this money will go a long way. And I like the way you were talking about it, which is if giving the town, obviously, it is the town manager's recommendation, but honestly, he takes your evaluation and your recommendation very seriously. I've been working with Nate on this for 10 plus years and it's unusual for the town manager to deviate from your recommendations that far. So, but in this case, we do have two years of funding and it's exciting to think that we can maybe do all of the work near the East Street School and then the remainder could go toward the larger project. As Nate said, I think it's about $2.5 million to do Belcher Town Road. But there is a lot of new development happening down there. There's new housing going in, there's new housing starts, so it's exciting. So happy to take any of your questions. I know you have lots of work ahead of you, so don't wanna take up more time. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Does anybody have any questions? All right, thank you so much. All right, so to the committee, it sounds like are we generally in agreement that we would do the Valley CDC for its full amount of 30,000 and then essentially funding all of, or most, recommending funding most or not all of the Southeast Street and the remainder going to Belcher Town? Fund of me. Okay. Why? I agree. Okay. Yeah, and like I said, so throughout the, we have time before we submit our application so we can refine budgets and then we'll make it work. Right. Okay, well then let's move to the more difficult decision-making that we have ahead of us. And it sounds like we all probably did some version of what Suzanne described of trying to figure out sort of the most votes for this and waiting, waiting different things. Nat, I was remembering that last year, you had done a couple of different versions of sort of these are the top five and 80% to each one of them and all of that. And so I guess I would, just like to open the conversation and just see if people want to talk about what their math showed them as they were looking at the rankings. Yeah, so here, we can share for the public and for the committee, this was, I don't know how visible that is, it's funny to enlarge it or not. But we had the committee rank proposals as part of the review process. And so here are the individual rankings. It's not a score, it's a rank order and that just gives you an idea of how things, how the review process ended. And so I know Becky had done some counting, like, oh, which one received, say the number one position or two ranking. And sometimes that's easy to say, okay, well, does one or two flow to the top and some don't. And then there's a discussion for the ones in the middle. And so if there's a place to start, that could be one. So with my ranking, it came out with big brothers, big sisters, sort of the top, looking at who is in the top five and how many votes they got for the one through five. It was big brothers, big sisters, the survival center and Craig's doors were the top three vote getters for weight. And then Amherst community connections and family outreach were the next set of amounts. Is that essentially what other people got? I had family outreach as having the most out of everyone. And I think on the second to last column and the second ranking, that should be family outreach of Amherst or Amherst community connections, I think. I mean, family outreach. Should be family outreach. Sorry, that must have been a copy and paste or a auto fill. Okay. Yeah, this one right here. I wrote it in and didn't count it. Okay. So it should be family outreach. Yes, okay. Yeah, so based on that, I had family outreach as kind of the top out of everyone and then survival center and big brothers, big sisters and then Craig's doors. Those were my, those were the one, two, three, top four with Amherst community connections as fifth. Rick, I did the same math as Suzanne. I took the average, you know, ranking from each person. So family outreach, average 2.17, survival center, 3.0, big brothers, 3.0, Craig's doors, 4.17, community connections, 4.67. So those were the top five. And then there was a little bit of a jump down to center for new Americans and literacy project tied at 6.17 and senior center at 6.5. Yes, my math was in reverse of yours now, but same exact, the people that were tied were tied. And yeah. And I realized I did Amherst community connections did especially well because I counted it an additional time. Right. I said that that should have been family outreach. So good, I'm glad we have, right, it's just there. But it was interesting to me that there was quite some dispersal, for example, you know, Craig's doors was number one ranking for a couple of people and number eight ranking for one person. Yeah, I found that interesting too. And so there's not that much consensus and that's why I kind of was curious what the average ranking was. And even I took out the high and low and just took out the average of the remaining ones in the middle and it came out to the same ranking, little bit different numbers, but same ranking anyway. So I think the ranking is fairly clear. Now that doesn't necessarily translate into how much, which one is chosen and how much is funded. But I think the ranking that resulted from all of our looking at the applications are pretty consistent. Yeah, I can share the spreadsheet, I just typed that list down here, that order that's highlighted here in yellow. And so yeah, I mean, I don't know how committee members feel about that. Is it just the top five or is there some, you know, I mean, maybe there was a discussion about there are priorities that were listed in the request for proposal, are we hitting those? And then another discussion that we've had before is whether we wanna try to fund organizations in some of the different kinds of categories. So looking at, you know, some of them sort of pair up like Craig's Doors and Amherst Community Connections do sort of similar type work literacy project and Center for New Americans do similar type work do we wanna do one from each of those pairings rather than doing two from one and then from another? Yeah, I think that I'm often in favor of that approach. And one of the reasons is when I do my rankings, you know, it's hard for me not to rank a kind of a, you know, homelessness or food pantry type program more highly because that's such a, you know, important human need, you know, compared to, you know, New Americans or literacy, even though I think, you know, they're both important, but also just the number of people that are served, for example, in a feeding program and food pantry is so much greater. And so it's hard not to rank the one higher than the other, but that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, it shouldn't be funded. Right, and then you can, you know, obviously, I mean, what those two programs do is enable people to get to a point where they're then able to be in the community working and buying food and owning a home or renting a home. So it's, you know, it's all part of one. And I mean, one of the things I'm always so impressed by in reading the applications is how much work everybody does together and the partnerships among all the organizations and how much they value, I think, each other's place in the community and knowing that each one is there, you know, providing particular services. So if we were to go from here and say that we did want to think about, well, I guess actually let me rephrase that. Does anybody have any questions left about any of the applications or anything they want to ask any of the organizations that are here? I had, is there anybody here from Craig's Doors, Nate? Cause one of the questions that, oh, good. Okay, Timothy McCarthy is here. I had, I was interested in that application and that it seemed that one of the things that they're looking to be funded is almost like an HR position, the compliance officer, which is not the kind of thing that we've usually funded. So I don't know, can we bring? Tim, you're going to be asked to become a panelist and then you can rejoin the meeting. I think I did it right. Can you all hear me? We can see and hear you. Thanks for joining, Tim. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having us. And Becky, that's a super astute observation and it's often, the title itself is a little bit misleading at times and it can be confusing internally as well. The focus of our compliance officer role is multi-dimensional. The reality is that Craig Stors has gone through a tremendous transition in the last year and part of that is having to really build the professional infrastructure that was not in place necessarily when our new administration had taken over. And in that process, we'd realized that we were out of compliance in a variety of ways. And we've closed a lot of those gaps, but the gaps that we're really trying to focus on are the complex implementation of our own rules for guests and staff alike surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion particularly surrounding the trans population right now. I don't know if folks are familiar but gendered on conforming and trans individuals and shelters are particularly vulnerable. And in terms of creating programs to support and provide a sense of safety and security in those spaces it's really difficult because oftentimes it's observed as a political issue. We observe it as a human rights issue but not always do we have other guests who are on board. So that's one example of our compliance process. And so it's really about us redesigning our mission surrounding the diversity, equity and inclusion that needs to be the foundation of our philosophy and our service delivery simply because of the diverse population that we serve and how those needs are sort of coexistent. There are components of the compliance officer role that are a little bit more, I guess, I wouldn't even say bureaucratic but it's a matter of aligning ourselves with HUD at the federal level and DHCD at the state level to ensure that we are performing to the highest possible alignment with their compliance regulation, I guess. So it's really a two-factor consideration. One is ensuring that we can continue to function because we really took over a situation that was untenable, unsustainable. We're building out of that really effectively. In fact, our reputation has gained a lot of momentum regionally, which is amazing. I think it's a good thing that we're working together to make sure that we have the opportunity to work together and test them into the amazing team that we have. But it's also because of our focus on really getting where we need to be. And then also recognizing the vision of who we want to be and what our organization represents. And we really do offer a safe space for folks who have had negative experiences in other facilities. We operate from a real guest-centric model. That we've still been able to see about 20% of our guests being placed in permanent long-term housing because of our dedication to a more innovative and robust case management system, again, informed by the compliance officer role. So I don't want to take up too much time. I hope that that was kind of helpful. And just while you're here, the other position that you were looking to have funded by the grant money was a case manager, is that right? Or a housing specialist? Exactly. Yeah, housing navigator. So the popular, for lack of a better term, the prevailing approach to ending homelessness, cycles of homelessness right now, is called the housing first model. And the idea is that you get folks into housing and then you provide them with all of the supports that they need to be successful. The problem is we don't have that luxury because there's just such a total lack of available housing to our guests. So in a lot of ways we're creating a sense of home and building those independencies and helping them become autonomous through our program while they're in it. But the objective is also to build relationships and systems that can help streamline the process of getting our folks posted. And most importantly, by being able to offer some graduated support. So one of the biggest heartbreaks that all agencies experience is that we make promises to landlords that this is going to be a supportive program and there's going to be a case management function. And then most organizations drop off their guests. There's no support. It's unfair to the landlord. The landlord grows sour to the idea of these programs that our guests benefit from. And it becomes a real negatively, what's the word I'm looking for? It deteriorates really the relationship and the possibility and practicality of us getting folks in. So the housing navigator is dedicated to building out our rapid rehousing and raft knowledge base, creating basic systems of implementation, forging relationships with landlords, offering support after placement and developing databases that we can reference and ensure that we're providing the most effective, the most efficient and effective strategies for trying to get our folks in. So it is a case management component. It's sort of a specialist within that umbrella. That's really helpful. Does anybody else have any other questions for Tim? Well, I was going to say, Tim, I think some of it is, you know, other organizations apply for say a case management worker, who, you know, who's the block grant funding is going directly to say a participant or beneficiary, whereas a compliance officer that may be diluted, whereas how much of their time is spending, you know, providing services directly to a beneficiary or a program participant. And, you know, right now the, depending on how the committee makes recommendations, we might not be able to fund both positions. And so then, you know, I saw in your budget, a lot of funding from DHTD is maybe already assigned to case managers. And it looks like block grant money is assigned to the housing navigator and also to the compliance piece position. And so, you know, I guess, I guess that was, you know, Becky and I spoke earlier and it was that was kind of the question, you know, is like how much is that, you know, the compliance person helping with making sure the beneficiaries are getting services or is it more of, as she said, kind of an organizational piece, not a, you know, a direct benefit piece. Sure. I think that that's a totally fair question. Can you help me with the one, the clarification, Nate, you'd said case manager, funding case managers offers direct impact to service delivery. The way I've been talking about it was that one, you know, sort of the direct service, like actually dealing with clients. Okay. Gotcha. Somebody who's sort of in the background. I mean, the idea, right? You think of a compliance officer at, you know, Again, yeah. The title, quite capture. Right. What that person actually, and it looks like you have that person already. Is that right? There's a person. That's right. Yeah, they're, they're actively, we're, yeah, they're, we, we couldn't afford to not have it. And for a few different reasons, and one of them is so, Nate, to, first of all, you're absolutely right. So it really, this is one of the struggles that we have. It's sort of on the one hand, we have this immediate need. And these people who are trying to navigate a system that is incredibly broken. And it's unbalanced and its advantages reflect the advantages that exist throughout any other layer of American culture. And so we have the response. I believe we have the responsibility. And I think Amherst has really illustrated a commitment to this as well. That this big picture of creating the most. Inviting and the safest possible space. Inevitably trickles down to the everyday experience, particularly of the most marginalized members of the folks that we do help. So we're already working with the most vulnerable members of society within that as a further marginalized group. And so the role of the compliance officer is to create systems and opportunities to create. I'm sorry, identify necessary utilities to ensure that those folks are safe. So you're right in the sense that it's not necessarily as hand in hand tangible as, as the impact that a housing navigator might have. But I would argue that it's actually, it's got a greater and broader efficacy in terms of improving the service delivery, including on the individual level, particularly if you're talking to someone who is gendered on conforming or struggling with their identity in any, any capacity. So that sort of trauma informed care that comes along with the, the, our compliance director, it's really ensuring that if anything that role is making the largest impact on the entirety of the organization in a very practical way to the experience of the guests on a day to day basis. Again, I understand the language, not only of the title, but some of the explanation in the application may have, have led to a different understanding of the role. And frankly, it's evolved as it's been implemented, but that's where that's where we're seeing its greatest impact right now. So to your point, it's not as tangibly impactful on a day to day, but I think that it could have a broader impact, frankly, for the folks that it does have the most influence on. And so if you received just a portion of your request, would it go, how would that impact what you can do? I mean, would you not hire a housing navigator or it would just be about finding funding to pay for positions that are already there? Yeah, I think it would, but inevitably we have to patch up what is already there, right? So we have to kind of catch up to what we've already invested in. I don't think that we, we would just be so grateful frankly for whatever can be committed and we're going to doggedly pursue the funding that's required to be the organization that we want and need to be for our guests. I know that that's a very political answer and it's rather, it's pretty ambiguous. But I mean, I really mean that. I mean, I don't know how else, how else to speak to it. It goes without saying we'd be thrilled to have the full ask, but any percentage would be, would go towards us improving these capacities in one way or the other, whether it looks exactly like what we've spent this, you know, all of our strategy time planning out, which has been put in front of you guys, we're hopeful and we're incredibly committed and dedicated. So we're going to find a way to make these things work. It's just, if we could have, it would afford us the opportunity to do so faster and the, it is an exigent need. It's a very immediate need for the folks that stay with us now. So again, the need for a housing navigator is implicit to the organization and the impact that we've been able to provide. I don't want to do a presentation. But the compliance officer so far has been able to go in, meet with guests individually to ask of their experiences to get honest responses. Just an example, guests are really afraid of expressing any sort of grievance to our organization, because historically they've been persecuted as a product of that. So they would complain about some function of another organization in the next day for whatever reason they're being asked to leave. So, our compliance officer was able to really dig that up, work with the guests to develop a guest informed policy for grievance that ensures anonymity and is now resulting in a non-retaliation policy that's going to be implemented later next week. That's just an example of how. That's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. So. My question was the same as, as yours, Becky. Also in one of your responses to some of the questions that we asked along the way, you said that both positions are project oriented and will be redundant or unnecessary once the projects are complete. But these sounds like really necessary roles that should have some continuity. So I'm just wondering like, do you have a progression plan for the. Sorry, I got excited because you're totally right. I will say when we wrote the request initially, we didn't recognize the scope of and how, how incredibly important both roles could in the, in the, in the state of the housing navigator, but much more so in the compliance rule. So essentially what we're doing is we're building out this foundation of policies that we have not had. And when I say a foundation of policies, I mean an employee handbook, I mean a curriculum of training. I'm talking about very basic institutional components, infrastructural components that organizations should have. As we went along, we realized what a living dialogue and talking about this is, and so the role will be absorbed by our director of operations. Once we've been able to produce again, that foundation that we can operate from, and then we'll have quarterly reviews. We'll have regular guest surveys based on their experience, what they might change. Those will be put towards a policy review committee, which will be constituted both of guests and staff to sort of review where we can improve the guest participation is something that we're still working out. We don't want to ever create an environment of apparent favoritism, but we certainly want those folks engaged. We've also really worked at building a robust and diverse staff constitutive of everyone of every identity you can imagine, but most importantly of what we're now calling lived expertise, previously lived experience. And so that's super helpful in terms of keeping our eye on the ball and moving that forward. The housing navigator role is really about building out our understanding of what has become an incredibly complex world of housing regulation and voucher availability. So this is about creating a knowledge base and again, creating the systems created the databases, which again will also live. So there will be an iteration of the housing navigator after the project is completed. It'll look like our current model. We have an outreach case manager who works with people who are not able to stay with us, whether that's because they're voluntarily choosing not to, or we just don't have capacity. That's more common. It'll look similar to that where it is a case manager who has a body of cases, but is working specifically with folks who are closer to housing or have a bit more of that capacity built. If that makes any sense and then they'll be responsible for sort of navigating the platforms and systems that are developed by the current housing navigator rule. Is that helpful? Again, I feel like I talk a whole lot. No, your passion is great. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Nat or Greg, do you have any questions? Greg, you're good. All right. Great. I think we are good. Tim, thank you so much. Oh, thank you. Truly. Thank you so, so much guys. And I'll just come back on to join. Yeah, I'll change your role to an attendee. I think it just happens automatically. I don't. I'm going to hit the bottom right now. Thanks, Nick. All right. Have a good day. Are there any other organizations that anybody wants to kind of dig deep into any questions from the applications? And let me know. I can share my screen again if we want to, to see the. The rankings at some point. My other questions. Actually, wait, let me, I just turned away. Did anybody have anything. Before I bring mine up again. Because my other questions actually were for sort of the similar organization for Amherst community connections around. Because it also there looked like it was about staffing was the, and about bringing people on. To the recognition that volunteers. It's tricky to run an organization of volunteers in center that you don't have that continuity and. And I was wanting to ask for some clarification on how many people could be hired, what the actual need is, and that. So I guess if we can bring in Amherst community connection, I don't know who's here, but I do see that they're listed. Sure. Yeah, so Amherst community connections, you're being promoted to panelists and then you can join. The meeting. Hi, good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is way, Lane, greeny. Thanks for laying. So, um, we, um, I, were you here at the beginning? I didn't see, I couldn't see all the names up. Okay. So, um, so we'll ask you some questions and, um, and dive in from there. Um, I was interested in thank you for your proposal. First of all, and for your work. Um, I was, um, noting that you, you know, the recognition that you, you noted the, um, the importance of, of paid employees versus volunteers for stabilization and continuity of services. Um, and I was wondering if you could go into a little more detail about what exact, how many people you would, you would ideally be bringing on as paid positions. Um, and, um, what, you know, full time part time, what length of time, that sort of thing. Thank you for the question. So, uh, we have applied to the, uh, CPA for a 12 voucher capacity to help families and individuals who are on the verge of becoming homeless because of their inability to pay rent or inability to pay utility. For those reasons, they are at risk of becoming homeless. So they are not homeless when they come to see us. That's the population we focus on. And we do have housing program for people who are already homeless. But for this position I'm looking at is, um, if we do get funded by the CPA or the 12 vouchers that we have applied, three years ago we applied for six vouchers and we were granted for those six vouchers to help families or individuals at $400 a month or the time they need in order to become stabilized. So this time because of the excellent track record we have established 100% of the 17 families and visuals in those three years when they were with us, none of them became homeless because we were able to apply for tons and tons of financial assistance for them. So during the pandemic when people lost income and unable to pay rent, we were able to hold housing for them. So because of that track record that we realize there's a lot of needs in the community and our experiment worked well. So as a result we want 12 vouchers. So in order to make that 12 vouchers work based on our experience, we feel we need to have a full-time person. We could hire who will be providing weekly case management to these 12 families and individuals. On top of that we continue to screen applicants who will benefit from this program but we don't have the voucher for them. And the idea is to quickly graduate as fast as we can stabilize those families and individuals get to the extent that they can hold on to the housing. So we can save that voucher for the next family and individuals. So we anticipate there will be another 12 if not more families and individuals waiting in the wing will meet with us and ideally will be weekly if not on a more regular basis. So to prevent them from falling into the homelessness while they are waiting for the voucher to get to them. So I would say the full-time person will be doing case management for upward of 24 families and individuals on a weekly basis. So I hope to have answered the question. And you've been granted the CPA funds for the 12 vouchers or you've applied for them? We have applied and right now we are waiting to hear from them. But we have had very good really outcome when we applied for CPA money or the housing first program years ago. We received three fundings in the three different cycles for upward of six vouchers, three vouchers and including the fourth one will be the CPA funding for the RSP, the rental subsidy program. So because of that good track record, we are confident that they will give us something. And I don't know how much, but if we don't get any, then we won't get any. But our housing is tied to money and our services to help people stabilize. So even if we don't get the money for the RSP rental subsidy program, every year we have 500 or more of individuals, unique families, individuals come to seek help from us. So by having the tool, yes, every year we do the CDBG, you know, we have to do the statistics for them. So every quarter we submit a report to the CDBG for the report purpose. And in our case files, right now we are at the brim of about 700 plus. Thank you. Yes. So even if we don't get a funding, we know there's needs in the community. And our goal of helping people keep their housing, that's the most important thing because once you spiral downward into homelessness, it's so hard to get them back on. So prevention of homelessness is what we are striving for, for this particular grant. Nader, Greg, does either of you have a question? Great. Thanks, Wei-Ling. Thank you for your work and your time. Oh, wait, hold on. We're just unmuted. Do you have a question? No, not for me. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Those are all the questions that I had that came up while I was doing sort of the review. So anybody have any thoughts about how to proceed at this point and or want to make any recommendation for what we should do going forward. And yellow just quickly, the yellow is what, you know, was originally discussed in terms of having a, you know, having the average of the preliminary recommendations and just going down in order. And I don't know if that, you know, if you want to start there and maybe if some of those still look like they'd be some of the five that would be funded and we could just then, you know, we can then discuss the others, you know, so if we just went down the list, there's family outreach. If that's, you know, a consensus, yes, maybe we just, you know, we can say that and then, you know, kind of work our way down if that is helpful. Sure. Why don't we start with that and knowing that we can go back if necessary, but, but generally in terms of the rankings. Yeah. So would people include family outreach in the final five? I guess we'll just nod if we. Yes. I have a question before we go any further. Great. Just for clarification for me, is that okay? Of course. Yeah, I was looking when I did the ranking, I was looking at the community development strategy, along with the survey of priority. And housing is a high priority, not the number one priority on the survey, a high priority for the town. In most of these assessments. My question is, historically, I don't have, you know, this is my first year, so I don't have the history to know what happens. Housing, as I recall, 10 years ago was a priority. So in terms of other needs that are around here, economic food, nutrition, which are lower on the survey and the priority list. It's not a lower concern, but just in terms of the list. For the most part, I gave a lot of weight to the priority in terms of the community assessments of its needs, and tried to stay close to that in terms of the first run through. And I was wondering, does the priorities shift much? Okay, if, for instance, if I'm thinking that housing stabilization is the top priority and it becomes a type priority for a number of different years, how do we keep some sort of balance for the other needs that are also important, but doesn't fall higher on the list? So how have we done that historically? Yeah, that's a really good question. The committee is, you know, from year to year has had that discussion. Would, for instance, two years ago they were saying, you know, right, we, if we have five priorities every year, housing, food, homelessness, you know, then how does it help with decision making or, you know, getting rankings? And usually the committee would say, well, we, you know, unfortunately, we're not, we can't find our way out of these priorities. And so they continue to be community priorities. So the one way to change it is, and some communities will say that their priority one year might be food insecurity. And that's it. And, you know, it may be it isn't housing, maybe it isn't mental health services or whatever it is. They really should say it's food and maybe, you know, and then they really will recommend funding a food pantry or food services. And the next year they might rotate it to housing and the next year they might rotate it to something else. And I think the difficulty in Amherst is we have a really robust network of service organizations. And so we have identified needs and they don't really go away. Right. And so, you know, for instance, if, you know, you know, I'll say, you know, Tim is really enthusiastic and say in five years, Craig's doors is doing amazing things. And they have a lot of funding. They might not apply for block grant funding because, you know, they've become such a big program and they're, you know, we have housing in town and they're meeting needs. And so maybe then the need might still be there. Maybe it's not as much of a priority and they're not applying, but, you know, the thing is we're not seeing that right. So what we've actually heard from social services is, is typically if you actually get more funding and the program grows, the need grows because the needs is there, but people might be reluctant to use it. But if they, you know, if the program somehow can do more outreach, they actually have more people. And so a few years ago, we did ask that of organizations and they said that, you know, if we, if we grow, there's almost no shortage of need. And so it doesn't make it easier. And so, yeah. So the committee from year to year has said, well, do we actually then wait the priorities differently year to year? That would then be, you know, translate into how the proposals are reviewed. And it's never been, that's never been the decision to do that. It's always been to say, we can have a few priorities and then that encourages different types of proposals. And then we'll just go through and rank the proposals. So, you know, yeah. So I think what Nat had said though earlier is sometimes if you get proposals that may be similar, you know, what would you, would the committee recommend funding one proposal and then try to hit proposals or recommend proposals that hit different priority needs. Right. So maybe one will be funding food. One might be funding housing and so forth. And so that's how you might go about making recommendations. You know, some of it is if there's a need in the community, the strategy identifies needs in the community, whether or not their block are eligible. And so it may be that there may be priorities and needs in the community, but there's just no organization that's meeting those and we don't get those proposals for block grant, a block grant activity. And so, you know, economic, so we have Valley CDC for micro enterprise assistance, but you know, a few years ago we didn't have those proposals. So even if we identified, you know, small business assistance, for instance, if we hadn't, if there wasn't a program that was operational, they just weren't applying for it because, you know, even though that the needs been identified, there isn't an activity that's set up to meet it or has a capacity to get block grant funding. And so the committee had said, well, let's keep the strategy broad as well and really focus on those needs and hopefully that encourages brainstorm your creativity and somehow we'll get maybe proposals that we hadn't anticipated. You know, because the ones we have here, you know, we typically see eight to 10, eight to 12 proposals every year and they're similar organizations. It doesn't make it easier for this year, but that's kind of been the history. But I think Greg, your question really brings up sort of what I was saying earlier is that, you know, being in the position of trying to decide whether food is more important than housing is, it's really difficult to try to make those assessments and so I think, you know, where we're at is, you know, having, you know, decided that we're going to do five organizations, which is the tradition of this committee. I mean, we could decide to just do one, but I think that's, you know, or two and give all the, you know, much larger amounts to a smaller number of organizations. That hasn't been how we've traditionally done it. And it's, I think not what the town manager would be expecting from this committee because there are so many different kinds of needs in the community. And so for us, it's making that hard, those hard decisions about the priorities, you know, and yes, housing stabilization is at the top of that list, but, you know, how do you actually rank it next to food insecurity? Thank you. So do, I guess the, I'll just say, you know, from my perspective, looking at the, at the list in yellow, you know, I am, I think I'm sort of inclined to say that we should, but it makes sense to fund organizations that are doing different kinds of work, you know, to not like to, to have center for new Americans or literacy project be, you know, which is representing the adult education sector to have one of those rather than having it all go toward housing stabilization and homelessness. I could be, I could really make an argument for, for either side, but it does seem to me to make some sense to do that. But I, so I guess I'm curious what other people think. Yeah, I guess I agree. And that's kind of, I think that the last cycle, we kind of had a similar question. And we ended up only funding one of them. And last time, I believe it was the literacy project and not center for new Americans. I think it switched. I think last time we did center for new Americans. I think it was the literacy project. Okay. I'm looking at this. Yes, I think you're, if you're looking at it, then you're right. I think you're right. Yeah, that was the 20, 2021. I think this was from, maybe this was from Ben, not Nate, but I assume that that Ben would be just as diligent as Nate. So yes. Okay. So, right. So last time we did center for new America, we did a literacy project and the, and Amherst community connections, I think, is that right as the, right? So if we were to think about, you know, spreading the support, then it would be this year doing center for new Americans and Craig stores potentially. As, you know, if we wanted to, I mean, is it really hard decisions? Yeah. And I feel a bit bad about the senior center proposal. I was glad that we received that. And it's kind of first time and it's something that, that we had identified as a need, even, you know, a few years ago. And this is the first time we got a proposal for it. So it's, it's. You know, how for me to say, well, we really can't fit them into the five grantees this year, but, but unfortunately, I think that's kind of the way the numbers are stacking up. Why don't we go through this list then, I guess, and just sort of see if we have consensus. And so family outreach, which really fills its own category. I don't think there's anything else that's quite, quite the same as what they do in terms of having a, you know, choosing between family outreach and another similar type organization. And our people. But we can just say that this would be one of the five for now. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, I don't know if it's right here down the list if that's visible for. Yeah. Then the survival center, which obviously also does. I mean, similarly for the skills that one particular need. And it's the only organization that does that in, in town. They brothers, big sisters, which is the only. Proposal we got that focuses on. Children. Development. And then I think then we're down to the, the choices. I was really, I thought that. Tim's explanation about what they're doing with those positions is. It was really interesting to hear. And I think it's. I was really impressed by how forward thinking and inclusive. I mean, I've always been impressed by the inclusivity of pride stores and what they do. And. I was really impressed by, by his explanation tonight, going into a little more detail about what those positions do. And that. And then when I was reading through them. Yeah, I thought it was a, you know, I'm impressed by how much work they're putting into this. Kind of repositioning of. What they do. And it's a lot of work. And what we're being asked to fund is maybe just one small part of it. But, you know, I'd love to be. Supportive at everything that they're doing. Even if they're only asking for. Us to fund one small part of it. Sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say, should I type down Craig's doors here? Suzanne's going to say, and then we'll. Well, I was just going to say based on our, on our rankings, if we were to assign values to them, I think. Craig's doors was not tied with Amherst community connections. It did have. The value would have been. It would have been a higher ranking overall, based on everybody's ratings. And Greg, what are your thoughts on Craig's doors? Let me see. And I should just say, I guess, just for the audience members that we do have two committee members who couldn't be here tonight, but who did give us their ranking. So. I think that's a good point. Or. Which is why it is especially important for us to look at those rankings and at the weight. Of their votes. Yeah, I did list. Craig's door is one of the. The top five that I've had. But one of the, one of the concerns that I have is. To have an understanding of whether. I think in terms of prioritizing. A lot of these programs are so close and they all do good work. And this is, I guess, a general question for the folks that are here today, but. Is there any program. That if they don't get funding. They have to. They'll be around, but they'll have to shift and not do that particular. Or provide a particular service on particular tasks. Will be done. And I was just wondering, is there. Is there any program that's concerned about. If they don't get funding, but they're going to be doing. It seems like most. Programs can shift a little. And make things work, but. You know, that's my concerns. Yeah, it's a good question. A few years ago we had the committee had this question. And it was. So. Our similar question and it was that, and it may come up tonight, you know, depending on what we recommend, what's the minimum amount. That a committee would want to be funded because if it's. If they're seeking a full-time position and the recommendation is only something that could be halftime. Is that. You know, can they make up the difference? would, you know, maybe they have to scale back a little bit or shift funding or they might have to try to then kick up some fundraising, right? And I don't know that something wouldn't happen. I feel like maybe it would maybe be delayed or in a much smaller scale, right? So, you know, it's hard to quantify that exactly. But, you know, for instance, if we only fund family outreach at 30,000, they might say, well, we can't do exactly what we're going to do the same thing we said we're going to do, but on a scaled down version, right? We'll do a third of what we thought we're going to do. Yeah, I think another another way to look at this, Greg, I think in the past when we've asked, and I think Tim gave a similar answer today, when we've asked in the past, you know, what would happen if we could only give you a smaller amount? Is it still, you know, worth doing? I don't think any organizations ever told us, well, then don't bother. I think everyone has always said, you know, whatever you think you can fund, we'll be grateful to accept and we'll work from there. I don't think anyone has ever turned down a smaller amount. Yeah, you're right. I don't think they have. Or with Craig doors, Craig's doors, for example, if we, you know, we're looked at the funding request between the housing navigator and the compliance officer, well, you know, maybe we could make a decision that way about. Right. The committee could recommend with a condition or, you know, another contingency that the funding go as much toward one position over the other or something, you know, similar to what you did with the town's proposal. So it could be that, you know, it's then the town manager's decision, but really shows some of the committee's thinking that, you know, typically when the recommendations go to the manager, there's also a memo that summarizes this discussion. So then they can, the town manager can understand, you know, some of the, you know, some of the thoughts that were presented in considerations that went into the recommendations. So we have the three right now. And I don't, I mean, do I type in Craig's doors as the four? I guess, well, so here's what I guess I would say is, is I think maybe the thing to do is to decide sort of big picture. Do we want, are we in agreement that, that we should pick one adult education program and one program that works with the houseless? And so then we're choosing between, you know, the two sets of two. Are we, so if we're in agreement there, then that will guide the discussion after. So I know Nat said he felt that that was the correct way to go. Suzanne and Greg, what are your thoughts on that? So we'd be choosing between what and what? Between Center for New Americans? Choosing between Craig's doors and Amherst Community Connections for one of the five and then between Literacy Project and Center for New Americans for the other spot of the five. Versus, you know, if you look at what our rankings were, where neither of the adult education programs ended up in our top five. So we went straight through the rankings, we would do both Craig's doors and Amherst Community Connections. Well, that's a tough one. I know. And also just to note, as I just said, right, we have two members who aren't here. So all we, the only voice we have from them is the rankings. I'm thinking also, but what are the, again, the two programs that we're trying to decide on? So we're deciding on, we have two spaces left in our group of five, and it's deciding whether we would do, if we followed the rankings, it would be the two organizations, it would be Amherst Community Connections and Craig's Doors, both of which work with the homeless population. If we decided that we wanted to give monies to two different types of organizations or organizations doing different kinds of work, it would be choosing between Craig's Doors and Amherst Community Connections for one of those spots and for the other spot choosing between Literacy Project and Center for New Americans. And which is not to say just to be clear, like we, I think we all understand that those organizations do different work and work distinctly in their own ways, and we're making the groupings just because of the category really not because they're the same. And the second category was for adult educations, that would you say? Exactly, yep. So Center for New Americans and the Literacy Project. So under the priority of economic self-sufficiency. Right, thank you. Yes, that's good. I have a question. In our forums, one of the activity areas I believe was transportation service and support, that is in the category, senior support, that is in the category that we've talked about today. The reason I bring it up is because there's other programs that we talked about that are in 6, 7, and 8, and have more people choosing them, placing them in 6, 7, and 8 than the senior center. So why would we pull one out and not the other for a comparison, just based on our ranking? So I think, I feel like we should go by the rankings that Suzanne and Nat did over mine because mine was flawed. But I think the senior center ranked 8th, is that right? So that's why we haven't discussed it in the same way, but obviously we can. Okay, so you're saying that the ranking may not be accurate? No, no, no, I think the ranking is accurate. My ranking was inaccurate. When I did my own counting, because I'm just terrible with numbers, no matter what, I miscounted myself. So I was just saying Nat and Suzanne, who both are excellent with numbers, did their own weight and ranking and senior center for both of theirs ended up ranking last by the votes. Right, so if you looked at the individual rankings, the senior center was, half the committee had them as their lowest ranking, and the others were lower than five, except for maybe one. So it was just, they were the lowest ranked proposal, as Becky said, so it just hasn't been discussed yet. If we can only fund five, does that one then leapfrog up to the fifth ranking when there's still a few others ahead of that in the overall priority list? So I think that's... Right. Okay. But right, it is a good question. I think the comparative review is, as Nat said, it's not the definitive necessarily that yellow list is not necessarily the recommendations, it's what the review kind of showed. And so if through discussions tonight, we reorganize, that's fine. We still have a few more to talk about. Another thing that we had talked about or have talked about before is the importance of not having organizations rely on community development block grant monies. And so to really think about spreading, going to different organizations in different years, where possible, so that we are really, I think, funding as throughout the community and not just having certain organizations just be able to sort of count on always getting CDBG monies. And this is an unusual year also because it's a two-year period. So organizations that have typically gotten money, if they don't this year, it'll be a two-year period where they're not getting CDBG funds before they can apply again. So just as we're thinking about, if we do decide to do the choosing between those categories, choosing one organization in each of those categories to think about picking ones that we hadn't picked before, or whether that impacts who's in the top five at all. And I just have a clarification question. So for Center for New Americans, on our ranking chart that we used to evaluate, and the funding request from the proposal, I think for Center for New Americans, it was $40,000? Yeah, right. Sorry, that was a, it is $40,000. Okay, I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. Well, so I guess just to, I will just make a recommendation of what I think the five should be just to get us started. So my recommendation would be that we fund the three that are written here, Family Outreach, Survival Center, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and then I would add in there, Center for New Americans and Craig Stores. And how the five this year over the next two years would be. Yeah, all right. And then, Yeah, I like that because I think on the one hand, you know, we, the previous cycle we had funded literacy project and not Center for New Americans. So I like, you know, going back to give them funding and I think, you know, not sure what the amounts are, but, but in terms of the five finalists for funding, I think that looks like a sensible group to me. Did Craig Stores receive funding in the last cycle? No, they haven't been funded in a while. So, you know, years ago we funded the operation of the shelter and then it's been, they haven't received block grant funding in a number of years. They didn't apply periodically for certain funding but they haven't been recommended or received it in a while yet. Last year, I do recall we had an extensive conversation kind of going back and forth between Amherst Community Corrections and Craig Stores. I think I would agree with your ranking, Becky, for those five. Right, so the ones that wouldn't receive funding are here, Amherst Community Connections, the literacy project and the senior center. So Greg, what do you think about that as the list? It's pretty much really close to what I recommended in the first place. You know, there may be a different order but the top five, there's four of them and looking at the proposal for the center in the categories that we were talking about, I think that's a good choice. You know, if we can't fund everybody, which we can't. And they didn't have the opportunity the last time through. I would agree to recommend that they be placed in top five, the center. Okay, great. Okay, so having achieved some consensus there, we haven't taken an official vote but I think then I would now say that if there are any participants here who want to share something that's not in your proposal or something that you think we haven't understood, you know, now would be the time. I'm cognizant. I'm just looking at the actual time so it's still, and I just still a little bit young. And so if there is anybody who wants to share anything, I would invite you to raise your hand. It's like Haley Bolton. So yeah, I'll be right in a second. I'm just reorganizing this for now and then we'll we can call on, you want to know about Haley to become a panelist, Becky? Okay. Yeah, Haley, you should be asked to become a panelist and then you can rejoin. Hey. Hi, Haley. How's it going? Yes, so do you want me to wait until you're done, Nate? No, I'm done. So it's not okay. Okay. I want to first just share a comment that as a first time applicant, it was very intimidating going up against some of these, you know, these established organizations that have a great history with the CDBG committee. But one of the things I don't know that I really got across in my application is that this is more than just transportation. It's more than just... I'm going to interrupt you for one second just to clarify. So you did the senior center... Yes, that's right. Yes, I don't know if we've met. I'm the senior center director. Okay, great. Thank you. So it goes beyond transportation, the ability for the senior center to book rides. It not only provides a way for individuals to get to needed appointments, it also provides a wellness check. So some of you may know, some of you may not, but when you are socially isolated, your risk of developing or having dementia symptoms worsen increases by 50%. And that certainly has been exacerbated by the pandemic. So if we have a tool through this van to give rides to older adults that gives us a set of eyes on the person, gives us an opportunity to say, hey, you know, we noticed that Mrs. Smith is a little bit more disoriented recently. She's not remembering where she's supposed to be. She's cancelling rides. We can have our social worker follow up with that person and refer them to services, or we can say, hey, this person didn't show up for their ride and they're always consistent. Let's give them a call. Let's make sure that they're okay. So it really goes beyond just giving a ride. It's a way to engage with our older adults and help them age in place, which is transportation and support services for seniors for two of the stated goals. And also just in case anyone's not aware, seniors, people over the age of 60 are 52% of the population. And that number will grow by about 17% over the next five years. So it's really time to start investing in our older adults. It's time to start giving them more support services because we are reaching a point where older adults outnumber people under 18 by five to one. That's a pretty statistically significant number. And there's no time like the present to start working on that and creating some infrastructure to help our older adults stay in the community. I hear all the time from people. I've paid taxes for 40 years and I can't get a ride to my doctor's office. Something seems wrong about that. And that's what we're trying to do through the Silver Shuttle is give people a way to be independent, stay in their homes longer. And I don't know if that really came across as clearly as I feel it in my application. So I thank you for giving me the opportunity to just say a few words. Thank you for that. I didn't get that from your application. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Can I ask, I know that the Dial-A-Ride program, or I think I believe that it has expanded recently. And I'm wondering whether there are other VAN programs that serve that same purpose and you're looking to expand it or whether because they're not directly connected to the senior center, it doesn't quite meet that need. Sure. So we conducted a livability service as part survey as part of the Agent Dementia Friendly Project. And what we found is that people are still needing more transportation options. I think the Dial-A-Ride has been helpful, but there are still people who are isolated and fragmented. I know I have one individual. She's 86. She loves coming to the senior center. She loves playing cards and getting to chat with the staff. And a lot of times she doesn't have a way to get home. Like we have to walk her home. She's a walker. She's very frail. If we had a VAN that somebody that I can say, hey, we don't need to walk you to your apartment, we'll just give you a lift. And it's so much easier and so much safer for that person. It gets very icy in the wintertime. So I understand that the PBTA provides a really valuable service, but it's not meeting enough. Again, there's 5,200 older adults. They can't all take the PBTA. And our VAN is ADA compliant. So we can take people who have walkers. We can take people who are in a wheelchair, which there are not a lot of services that offer that. Anybody have any questions for Hailey? And actually, let me just want to respond to your initial comment about feeling intimidated about that. First of all, just to say that the work you do is as essential in the community as anything. Oh, thank you. And I hope, you know, that, you know, depending what happens tonight, but I hope you will continue to apply and and not be intimidated by the process and know that we absolutely reviewed your application as seriously as any of the other ones. And we love when new organizations do apply or I mean, senior centers has maybe applied in the past as before I was even on it. But it is it's great to get new applications and see the amazing work that's happening in town. And I really appreciate that you're here tonight and the extra comments that you made tonight. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think it was just first time nerves. So yeah, so thank you again for this opportunity. Take care and thank you for your help. Thanks. Hey, I'll make you an attendee again if there's other questions. Okay. Thanks. I can share my screen again for everyone and the, you know, so the I've reorganized the proposals here with the funding to match what was here. And so if that's still the order the committee likes, we, you know, the next decision is the budgetary one. You know, so just, you know, just a reminder, we have 330,000. The five organizations we recommended is a bit more than that. So, you know, at some point, we have to figure out how to allocate the budgets for each, each request. So let me first ask just whether hearing Haley sort of additional information about the program, whether that changes anybody's thoughts about what we should do. I think it just underscores how difficult this process is when we can only choose five and they're all very worthy of funding. And, and I can't fault any of them, you know, for what they're trying to do and, and I can commend them for their efforts. And so it's just always tough to take eight really strong applications and narrow it down to five. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. And whether or not it's a consolation Haley, typically, you know, some organizations apply for a few years and don't get funded until, you know, we can, you know, staff, we often say we can follow up with organizations to help, you know, relay comments or I, you know, have ideas where applications can be strengthened, proposals can be strengthened the following year. So I think that's something, as Becky said, you know, we can continue to apply, you know, you can continue to apply for the, you know, the next year or two. And so, you know, that often happens where the first year may not be recommended and it might just be that, you know, as Nat said, it's really competitive. And so it's just a matter of, you know, getting in, you know, there are some follow-up questions the committee had. And so then it's just, you know, how can we, how can, you know, the proposal be strengthened for next year? So can, Nate, can you, is it possible to, as we're doing the numbers, remove the three that we're not looking at right now, just to see what the total is of just the number? Sure. At least I can sum that up. Sorry. Why is that not summing up right? Should be 453, 440. Yeah. I think the others might be text. Are they? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I copied this from the website. So. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What I forgot what that one was. 115, 400, I think it is. Oh, yeah. There we are. Yeah. I think it was just the right format. I think, I think a small amount was 115, 440, I believe. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's always funny when you get down to the dollars and cents on a proposal like this. So about, we ended it at 40, you know, 442, 37 or something. All right. So, Nat, this is when you work your magic and you figure out if we gave everybody the same percentage of their app. Yeah. So that's, yeah, that's about 73%. So maybe if, if Nate wants to put these down just as a starting point so you can see what it looks like if it's all prerata. Sure. It'll be in this, it'll be in this column here yet. Okay. So this is just, if it's preratus, 56, 766, 101, 888, 58, 222, 84014. That would be for Craig's Doors. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Let me just give Center for New Americans would be 29, 111. So with rounding, I'm not sure if it comes out to exactly the same. Yeah, with rounding, there's $1 extra of it. We can make that work. Yeah. But so that gives you an idea of what, if everyone has reduced prerata, what it looks like. Yeah. And so, you know, in the years past, sometimes we have two recommend, you know, we might have another way to do it. And so we could have two columns next to each other just as a, you know, another. So in years past, would you or not in years past, even if we want, if we wanted to entertain, would we kind of assign weight based on our rankings again, going back to the rankings. So say family outreach of Amherst had, you know, whatever, say five percentage points above any other, would we weight that higher and give them a higher percentage? So say instead of whatever 73%, we assign them 90%. Would that be another way to do it? I mean, it would make the numbers a little bit. Yeah. Definitely something we could calculate. Yeah. Yeah. In the years past, that has been one strategy because, you know, taking as Nat did a, you know, a proportional amount, it could just be that if someone asks for more, they get more whether or not the review is stronger. And so, yeah, I think this becomes a discussion point. Again, you know, you know, we also talk about, you know, say Center for New Americans or if an organization isn't asking for a lot, you know, could we fund them fully? You know, what does that mean? And, you know, sometimes it's about how does it, how is the funding request fit into their overall other, you know, their program budget? You know, is it, how is it in terms of what is it funding? Is it a position? Is it a certain service that can be, you know, proportionately reduced, easier? And so, those that becomes all something that's considered. It's not really a straight line formula. I mean, it can be, you know, this could work if the committee likes this in it, you know, it's a rational approach. And it could be that well, right? Maybe you'd say, well, maybe we just move it around a little bit because of the way the rankings, you know, the weighted rankings were. And another thing, and I think one of your kind of main points that can, when the issues I have with this is that it does sort of reward an organization that asks for, you know, a whole lot more. The other kind of data point I sort of looked to and, you know, take it with a grain of salt, I guess, but if we funded them in the past, how does this compare with previous funding? So, for example. That's what I was just gonna say. Yeah, so I was looking at too. Yeah, so for example, family outreach for the single year, we funded 36.5. So that would be for two years would be what, 73,000. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so this amount would be, you know, quite a bit lower than what we funded them in the past for family outreach. Did you say 72? Yeah, 73, I think. Yeah, 73. So if you took their one year of funding at 36.5 in the last cycle and funded that for two years, it'd be 73,000. So because I was looking at that too, Nat, like the, you know, the Survival Center, it was 51.100 in the last cycle. So you're close to that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we would, just because that's what we funded last time, we should get as close as we can to that. And even though the new request was around the same or more. Right. Right. I mean, if you took the, you know, the, the available funding and, you know, divided by five, then, you know, you're, you know, at 65,000 and it may, you know, whatever it is, then maybe that the proposal is coming and it works out really nicely that everyone gets around that amount, but then it, you know, it doesn't, right. So it's not that everyone, you can get, you know, the committee or the, you know, we didn't, we haven't ever said that, you know, that we would just divide it equally. I mean, there could be, we could do that. It's just it becomes something that it's not then. Right, we'd end up with a surplus because that would have to go to someone and which could maybe that's where the rankings would come in, as we'd say, okay, everybody gets the same amount, but because Center for New Americans is asking for less, their extra goes to the first organization that received the most votes being family outreach. Right. Yeah. And I guess looking at these numbers, I'm, I'm just the pro-rad amounts. I'm, you know, my, my instinct is that while I applaud Craig's doors for all that they're doing and their, their, you know, really ambitious proposal, I'm looking at that 84,000 bigger and just wondering whether that's a bit out of proportion compared to how we funded the other programs in the past. So my, my instinct looking at the past grant cycles is that this pro-rata has family outreach, for example, kind of too low and maybe has the Craig's doors amount too high. Do you want, I mean, I came up with some numbers, I don't know. I mean, they're not as mathematically applicable as what you did, but I don't know if you want to try these out. So for family outreach, I had 70,000 survival center, 100,000 big brother, 60,000 new Americans, 25,000 and Craig's door, 75,000. And that gets to 330, I think. And where did you come up with those? So I looked at what I kind of looked at what they had been funded for in the past, for those that had been funded in the, in the past, and for what they were requesting. So as I said, it wasn't really as mathematical in nature, it was more just assigning based on our rankings, what they requested, what they also received. So, and then I just had to knock down some of the numbers a little bit to get to the 330. So we, I mean, obviously this is just, this is just my idea of what I wrote down. So, you know, any of these I think could be bumped up or down. Yeah, but I like, you know, compared to the sort of just mathematical prorata allocation, I think your round numbers there are closer to what I think is, you know, a good allocation. Yeah, I like how I like them as well. I'm wondering whether, you know, something like the Center for New Americans, which I know now this puts all of our rankings sort of up the window, but places, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like if they're asking for, for so much significantly less than anybody else is, because it's a smaller organization, whether getting less means more to them, a larger organization getting less, and whether giving them a full amount that they've asked for is more impactful for them than it is for some of the larger organizations, like to bump them up to, you know, say 35, take 10 away from, you know, five away from each of five and five. Yeah, from Family Outreach and Amur Survival Center, whether it's that much more impactful for Center for New Americans, because of their budget. Yeah, I guess I would have thought if I were to kind of tweak these, I might increase Center for New Americans a bit and reduce Craig's Doors. I know it doesn't make that much difference. It doesn't move the needle that much, but Survival Center, just knowing that we've funded their single-year food pantry at 51, I would love to go 102 instead of 100, even though it's a very marginal difference. But to me, somehow that feels like, you know, we're not, you know, reducing our support for them. Yeah, that's the first number I had for them was 102, and that's where I was playing with bringing it down to get to the 330, but I think that makes sense too. All right, so if we did then 102. To Survival. To Survival. So we'll do a third column here just for fun, because we can. Yeah, I mean, I was looking at the budgets for each, you know, so what I was trying to quickly, you know, what Craig's Doors, say, for instance, was asking for one position, you know, 75,000 would cover it, for instance, you know, over the grant period and, you know, would, you know, how does it work for the other organizations? And, you know, as Matt said, no one's ever turned it down, but it's nice to know that if we're getting close to, say, what could be a, you know, a nice amount or an amount that works with the budget. Well, for Craig's Doors, I mean, if we looked at their budget for the Housing Navigator, that's 71,760, and the Compliance Officer was 43,680, so if we brought that down to, like, 72,000, then you could, you have 3,000 to play with. So I like the idea of doing that. I also, though, I don't, I'm not inclined to dictate how the money gets used. Yeah, true. But it's fine to do that, but not to necessarily say you must spend it on. Not to dictate, but to use that as a guideline in coming up with a number. Exactly. Right. For instance, if we were changing something, you know, it's kind of an ask, like, oh, what happens if they receive less? Like, oh, all of a sudden, you know, say, for instance, we were, the Center for New Americans was getting so little, it's like, oh, they, you know, it really, they lose a teacher position or something, you know, I'm not saying that's happening, but right, for instance, if that was the case, I think their budget was a little, you know, the blocker and money helped in a number of different areas in their activity budget, you know, line items. So I don't know. So where are we going? So if we're doing that. So why don't we do, let's try this. If we put in for the Survival Center 102. Sorry, 102. And then for Craig's Doors, 72. And then I just pulled up the Center for New Americans budget. Just to see if there's any sort of number that makes sense. We could look at their, I mean, it's such a bare bones budget. Yeah. You know, that it would pay them 35 and then we do the rest. So we'd have 9,000 to take from the other two. Okay. Right. And it could be, I mean, yeah, yeah, let's say, you know, do we keep Survival Center at 100 or Craig's Doors at 70 and have a round number? I don't make it much easier for you. Not necessarily. Because the 102 and 72 were sort of with reasons behind them, even though the numbers aren't right. We could just, but if we were using that same methodology as maintaining like Survival Center for maintaining the 51 100 or close to what they received previously, then we would want to do the same for family outreach, which would be 73,000. So then we're, you know, okay, that actually could work, maybe, right? Because then big brothers, if we did 58, that would be over. 48, 48. Yeah. Because big brothers was funded at 29 200 previously. So yeah, so I just threw in 48. We kept those numbers. Well, so we could then go to maybe 34 instead of 35 or Center for New Americans and then bump get the rest of big brothers. And then it just brings it a little closer. So we're here. Just so everyone. Yeah. I have visible is that I mean, I have a big monitor. So what's our is our math perfect now? Yeah, nice and square. Okay. Oh, there's always some little tweaking when we apply for the block grant piece. Usually, especially with capital projects, there's they, they, the block grant wants to know that we have contingencies and other things. So, you know, we recommend something the town manager does. And then when we complete the budget form, the CDBG always wants to have like, you know, 2%, they set aside even for so, you know, there's always like something we have to make it work. So the agency typically gets exactly what we recommend or what's their town recommends. It might change a little bit, but, you know, we'll make it work up to the maximum amount we can apply for. Does anybody Greg, what are your thoughts on this? Do you have any, any opinions on these? I'm sort of trying to figure out what to call them funding recommendations A, B, and C. Yeah, I wouldn't go with it. I don't understand the rationale. I know what the numbers look like, but I don't understand the rationale for, for, especially the first thing. I know you, one of the things that you mentioned, not you, but the group mentioned was the fact that we may consider a past one. But why, why? Why are that determinant of anything if we're going to cut the other phone? Well, I'll speak to that, because I think I may have mentioned that. And that's because, you know, some of the, you know, when people make the applications, it's either for a new project or it's for a continuing project. And so survival center and family outreach are good examples of things that we've been funding for a while. And so to me, it just seems like if we're going to fund them to keep on funding them at roughly the same level, makes sense. It sends a statement that we're continuing to support them. We don't see any reason to, to decrease, you know, obviously, unless there were other programs that were, you know, we felt, you know, more worthy of the funding, but, but, you know, rather than, than to be asked the question, well, why did you, you know, prep funding for one group or another? It's, I think, defensible to say, well, we're trying to keep it, you know, level funded, even though with inflation, that money probably doesn't go as far, but it's a continuing program. And so we're trying to keep it funded if we think it's really important. Yeah. And that was part of this same decision making that I had was just looking at what they had previously been funded and what their funding request was. So the Survival Center was previously funded around 102. They requested 140. If they had requested AB, then that wouldn't have been a factor in my consideration. But that, that was my rationale is just looking at what they had been funded at before. And not necessarily level funding it, but that was just part of what I used in my rationale. But does that mean that if they requested, uh, initially more than 140, they would be getting more than 102? I don't get the connection if we're taken away from other programs. Well, we're going to be taking away from all of them. Right. Thank you, Suzanne. Of course, to share, I mean, everybody's losing the same percentage versus preferring to maintain closer some programs than others. I mean, we support all the programs, not just one. So would you? And we have three other programs that we're not funding at all. You know, so the rationale is just doesn't make a whole lot of this to me. But we only can, we're only allowed to fund five, which is why we're not funding the other ones at all, right? So we're stuck with five. But I'm wondering, so Greg, do you feel? See, but out of those five, those three, we did fund one last year. And this year, we're not worried about keeping it at the same level. But we do support them and think they're doing real good things. Right. So why don't we treat them the same as the other people that were funding? You know, it doesn't make sense. There's not enough funds for everybody to get that they need what they're requesting. I understand that. And I'm not saying that's a problem, but I'm I'm thinking that there needs to be a more rational way of distributing the money. I'm just saying we gave you this month last year. And we're going to give you more than other folks because we're trying to maintain while we're cutting others. And I know it's only a hundred something, but it's still more than the one on 1888. So we're giving them more money in terms of portions of other folks. And we're cutting other folks that we also do support. So do you think that it makes more sense than I hear you that to do the percentage, you know, to have everybody gets 72% or whatever the one is in column A or to divide 330,000 by five and everybody gets that and then figure out where the little leftover goes for Center for New Americans. I heard Suzanne said that in the second column here, at least, which is slightly different in the third, was that some of this was also based on the rankings over here, right? So the kind of the weighted scores of how the proposals were reviewed comparatively. And so if there's some strong proposals here, maybe their budget isn't as reduced as some of the others. And I don't think there is a clear formula for this. And so if this is where it gets pretty tricky. And so, but I'm also hearing discussions of how it looks at their overall budget, how it looks at their program budget, activity budget, how it's compared to their overall review score and rankings and weight. And so to me, that's the rationale. We don't have a clear percentage, for instance, or something else, but we're taking all those factors and putting those into how we arrived at, whether it's this or this. My concern with the percentage is everyone's just going to keep asking for more knowing that we're going to do a straight percentage. And so next year, if I asked for 50 this year, and I got 80%, well, actually, I'm gonna ask for 80. You know, I'm asked for 90. And, you know, so I think it's, I think it's, I think there's a really, it's a really difficult decision to make. Could I ask, so I'm just, I'm curious just to back to my question to Greg, whether what, which of those, if we're, if we were going to do it sort of on that, the equality basis, what, which one of those do you think makes more sense or feels more equal? Of columns? No, of everybody gets divided, 330 divided by five versus, you know, everybody gets 72%. I don't understand what you mean by 230 divided by five. So we have $330,000 to give away. Oh, okay. We divided, you know, we, and we can give it to five organizations. So we picked the five. So if we just said, everybody gets what is it 65,000? 66,000. 66,000. And then we have an additional, we have been, so everybody gets that, but Center for New Americans only asked for 40. So there'd be 26,000 that we would then maybe divide equally amongst the rest of them. That's bonus. That's a bonus. I mean, I think the center should get the 40. I mean, that's what they asked for. Right. Well, they wouldn't get the bonus. So, but I guess my question is like, which one seems fairer? Is it doing it that way or doing a percentage of what they asked for? The 330 divided by five seems to be more fair. Because I think A is, they can manipulate it by requesting more the next time as you mentioned. And so if it's a portion, they would get more the next time. And that would be a symptom to overrequest in terms of pad your funding. And I'm not saying anybody's doing that now, but I'm saying that's the danger in doing it that way in terms of rationale. And the problem with being the second one, I think that's the closest if we don't do it, 330 divided by five, that's the closest to what I think the rationale, yeah, that one could support. But, and it's not a whole lot different than a third suggestion, but I don't understand the rationale. I mean, it's just a little arbitrary in terms of what we decide who's important. Yeah, so I think I would prefer the 330 divided by five. Can we put that in Nate and just make, can we do one more column just so we're looking at everything? I know it's easier to envision that one, but. Okay, without the bonus. Right, so we'll have to add in, we'll have to figure out where the bonus goes. So everybody would get 6500 more, so 66 plus 6500. Except for Center for New Americans, so 72500. Doing it that way, family outreach and Craig's Doors get the same amount, essentially the same amount that they would get in our, in the final column. Sisters get significantly more and so it's really our survival center is the one that loses out the most. Yeah, I guess my problem was doing it in such a formulaic way is the same problem with the other formula, which is pro rata, which doesn't take into account our rankings, it doesn't take into account the kind of how valuable each program might be to the community, how many people it serves. So survival center is a good example of just, you know, a hugely impactful food pantry program that serves so many people. And as much as I support and applaud what Center for New Americans does just by nature of the program, it just can't impact as many people directly. So I guess I don't favor the kind of formulaic allocation. I would like to take into account other factors, how we rank them, you know, the importance in the community and how many people they serve and the impact of the community. So I think I'd like to take a more nuanced approach. Yeah, I mean, in coming up with my rankings, I, and I, and we can't speak for the two people that are here, but I did look at what they were requesting for funding and the number of people that their programs support. So yeah, I kind of am with you, Nat, that I feel like we'd be maybe slashing some, some people that had a higher ranking. And then why would we 100% Fund Center for New Americans, which out of all of our rankings was, you know, second or third to last? I mean, these are all amazing programs and I hate to, it's really difficult. Yeah. Right. So we are at 915 and I would say that we should probably try to reach, either reach consensus tonight or decide that we're going to continue to another night. So we can vote. I think that maybe what we should do, Nate is do two rounds of voting and do one vote. That's just for the organizations and one vote. That's the budget. Does that make sense? Or is it better just to do all in one? Yeah, I mean, if we can, if the committee can reach consensus, you know, whatever is visible, I mean, we can highlight this is what's the capital. And then, you know, it's a matter of just highlighting something here to show the vote. And that could work. I feel like I feel like there's already been agreement with the organization just now really the budget piece. So Laurie just raised her hand from Center for New Americans. So why don't we let her in and then we'll reach. Laura, you'll be asked to rejoin as an attend or as a panelist. I think so. Hi. Thanks for letting me in and thank you for this very deliberative process. I feel like you've, you know, working really hard at acknowledging the spectrum of activities that both the community development block grant programs statewide is designed to support and also what's in the Amherst master plan. I just want to say one quick thing, listening to you debate. We did make a pretty modest ask we always have. In the past, you have funded us at about 20,000 a year. We were often encouraged to ask for more. We never did. I was, we were happy to get something. You know that the numbers we put in might seem modest compared to what else you're looking at. I just want to remind you that every one of the adults that you support with us is also supporting children and other family members. So you're actually leveraging tremendous support. If you talk to teachers in the Amherst public schools, ask the ELL teachers why they all support this program because the parents in our classes are giving their kids a better chance. So I guess you're trying to figure out how to allocate the budget and we'd be happy for anything you give us. We were not funded last year. You're right. And we have been overwhelmed by Afghans, Ukrainians, Haitians. The waves just keep coming and it's almost beyond our capacity to welcome at this point. And yet we really hate to say no. And yet crowded classes are not effective. So we'd be happy for anything. But I just want you to think about the numbers in a more expansive way because every parent who helps their child makes a difference that way. So that's all I want to say. I know it's late and thank you. Thanks. I'll change your role to attendee again. If we were then to just try to, if you can sense this on what the funding looks like, does somebody want to, I guess, Nate, I'm not sure how to do it, make a motion to do everything that we've all agreed on and then one of these particular budgets? Well, yeah, I mean, if this is visible, here's the proportional one that there's maybe some disagreement about. Here's the pro rap. Let me just, before I do anything too crazy, pro rata one here. Here's the weighted one where Suzanne had, it looks at both the rankings and the score and also what the proposal was being asked. And then here's the other fourth now column. And so to me, it seems like this was one where it seemed like the committee could be leaning as this weighted recommendations. And I don't know if it needs to be any more tweaking or, you know, I think Becky was leaning towards age, which is I don't know what it's called. I'll just say age. Yeah. So I'll make my little pitch. I think my pitch for age is that I think it's specific to the amounts that they asked for, for specific things that CDBG for the, for the, sorry, I'm getting to my, oh my God, I've been awake for so long and talking, what the, what the CDBG funds would go toward, right. And so the Craig stores of the 72,000 that was sort of specific to a particular salary. And with I think we had what there was another one that made sense for that. So I think in that way, that one makes sense to me. I agree. I think the pro rata one does, I agree with what everybody I think has said, which is that that just encourages people to ask for more than they need, knowing that we might just go in and give everybody 60% or whatever it is. So I think I lean toward age. But there is also then a part of me that really hints a little bit to the benefit of E, where it's not about this is the amount of money we have, all of these organizations, yes, they're weighted, but each of them is doing such incredibly important work in the community, and they each get the same amount to work with. So I sort of lean back and forth between those two. Yeah, I think I favor age. I think one of the issues I have with just the proportional is that it doesn't really take into account the rankings that we developed and also in a more complete way because it also doesn't take into account that we're trying to fund various areas. And so even though, for example, Center for New Americans and Literacy Project, the funding requests were lower and the rankings were lower, we still wanted to include one of them. And so if we were simply going to do proportional funding, I might not be as inclined to include that as a priority. Whereas by having the more nuanced funding recommendations like in column H, I think we're able to include some of those smaller amounts along with some of the really high priority things that the community has identified. And so the programs that have been very, very successful and important in the community and fund those at a much higher level that I think they deserve. Suzanne or Greg? Yeah, I mean, I would lean more towards H or G, probably H, I think those numbers. Some of the reasoning we had, Becky for changing some of those numbers was to get bump up Center for New Americans a little bit and get closer to the family outreach of Amherst, which overwhelmingly had the highest ranking. And so I think that's where those bumps kind of came from in H. So I think I would lean that way out of all of these. Greg, where are you at with these? I'm not sure. I think everybody makes a good argument for each one of the ways of doing it. You know, there's positive and negatives for each one of them. I don't know that I can give you a firm just know on any of them today. I want to think about what Nate said. So I would prefer to table it to a next meeting so I can think about what people presented for these things. Are there four options? Yeah, four options. Okay, so I guess if we were to hold another meeting, which I think is on the calendar for the 26th or something of January, I think what I'd like to do if we're going to do that is I would like us to vote and reach consensus right now on the non-social service organizations and the list of organizations we're going to give to so that when we reconvene and when we're joined by the other probably the other two members of the committee, we're not revisiting everything that we... Yeah, I think for that reason, I have a fairly strong objection to kicking this down the road. I think we all came prepared, those of us who are here and I think we should be prepared to finish the job. I lean that way also because I think we could talk ourselves in circles and probably come up with four other versions of other ways to fund. I would love to reach consensus, but I know that I guess we just need to achieve majority. So is this meeting on this date typically is not only to come up with the five projects, but also the five social services projects, but to also make a recommendation for funding and then that's finalized in the next meeting? Or is the next meeting just in case we didn't do that today? Yeah, the next meeting on the 26th would have just been a fallback in case it couldn't have been made tonight. And so yeah, so the process would be if this were voted, you know, organizations and budget, we have a public hearing which is required as part of the block grant process which is scheduled for February 2nd. So between now and then the hearing, staff would be with the town manager. Becky might be in the meeting as well as chair and we'd review this discussion in the rankings and the town manager would, you know, could make changes, right? Maybe they change the budgets a little bit as well, just thinking about things, but they would, you know, take the recommendations under advisement. And then before the public hearing, we'd publicize, you know, the quote, final recommendations that would be included in the town's application. And so it typically it's one or two meetings to do what we're doing tonight. I mean, usually it's unfortunately one long meeting, sometimes it's continued, so we do have that extra one, but it's not as if we have any other business necessarily to take care of on the 26th. Right. Or any more information that's going to come in. Right. We haven't asked any for other clarifying questions. If we wanted to, we could have done that to whoever was present tonight. Okay. Thank you. Okay, then I am going to move for that we vote and I never get this language right, but that we vote to fund the three non-social services as written here, the Southeast Project for in full, the Valley CVC in full and the remainder to go to the Belcher Town project. And then for the social services that we fund family outreach of Amherst, Amherst Survival Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters Center for New Americans and Craig's Doors, and that we fund them in the amounts as laid out in funding recommendation H. I would second that motion. So all in favor. We have to do a roll call. So it has to be back. You'd have to call each individual member. I have to say yes or no. Right. So that I'll go to you. So I would vote yes for that. Okay. And Greg. No. Okay. And Suzanne. Yes. Back here. Are we you cut out? I don't know. Oh, so I obviously made the motion. So I vote yes. And so it passes. Right. And I think then we go on to our next agenda item. Yes. That's, yeah, I think that's fair. And Greg, so we, you know, we'll have a meeting with the town manager. I think, you know, we have some, if you wanted to voice some other, you know, if you have any other comments now and we can just relay that when we meet with the town manager in terms of the funding recommendations for social services. Okay. We're just talking about the funding recommendations. I don't know. I didn't say no for the five social services or the non-social service. Right. It's just the funding, how we fund. I just want to make clear of that. But I don't have anything to add at this point. Sure. In terms of the town manager. All right. I'll stop my share. So the other agenda items were recommendations, review target areas, public comment. So I think we've done that. I don't think we need to do anything with target areas. So the way the block grant or the DHC regulations are is that the non-social service activities. So the capital projects have to be in a target area. So if, for instance, it's a chicken and egg problem, sometimes if the product we recommend is outside of target area, we might have to then change the target area to match the project, which didn't happen this year. So I don't think we need to do anything with that. And there's still two members of the public. If we want any comment, I guess, Becky. Yeah. And so either Susan or Maya, I guess is that they're happy with what happened tonight and maybe are just smiling at home, hopefully. Sleep. Neither one is raising their hand. We'll take that as a sign that they don't have anything to add. And so public comment will be over. And I think that the meeting can then be adjourned. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, the unanticipated items. Lucas emailed, said he has, he's a sick family member. And so he emailed last minute and said that he couldn't make it. And then for other, nothing unanticipated, I guess the, you know, I don't have anything else, I guess I was going to say that we have a vacancy on the committee. And maybe I don't know if anyone's terms are coming up, but the town manager, you know, in the next few months, we're trying to fill vacancy. So if any members know of anyone who would be interested for next cycle, it's always good to get someone on board early as opposed to late. So, you know, the block grant does have a certain schedule throughout the year. And so it's hard to take someone in October, when we've already started planning for the next year's grant cycle. So it's nice to have someone on board, you know, spring and summer. So they're ready for the fall. And we can always try to offer some training or workshops to get people comfortable with the process. But, you know, if you have anyone interested, they can contact me or they can submit a CAF if they'd like. So Nate, I don't want to talk about it now, because it's 930 and I know at least I have not even had dinner yet. But I would, I do think it would be good to talk about at maybe at the public hearing to add to the agenda, what it means for the committee that this was a two-year cycle and that we likely wouldn't actually have any decisions to make potentially for a fairly extended period of time. Yeah, so, you know, we have, you know, a block grant committee in Amherst is a standing committee. Some communities that might be just tied to the block grant process or cycle, and it may be that they might have the select board or another committee act as kind of this, you know, your role. So typically if everything goes well and the activities get under contract and everything, the committee doesn't necessarily need to review anything. We try to send you quarterly reports, but in the off chance that a project comes in under budget or sometimes projects don't come to fruition. So, you know, say, for instance, Belchertown Road, although the town has some funding, what if it, what if the product didn't happen? We'd have to reallocate that funding and we'd actually go through a mini RFP round and then the committee would make recommendations again to the town manager. So oftentimes after the application is submitted, there's a, you know, the committee might not meet for three months and then we can meet as needed, you know, throughout the summer. So typically, right, the committee might have a little bit of a downtime. And then right now that it's a two year cycle. It's interesting. We have to have a hearing during the program year to hear comments on the current activities, but because it's a two year cycle, that might not happen for a year. So yeah, geez, I hadn't really thought about that. You know, I would probably meet at least maybe quarterly with everyone just to, you know, if at the least just meet every three months just for a quick meeting to check in and give you updates, but that could be a really quick meeting. Okay. So right now the next planned meeting is February 2nd. Correct for a public hearing. But you'll let me know, Nate, if you need me for anything in between now and then. Okay. Thank you all so much for your Looks like Maya has raised her hand actually. Okay, great. Hi, so you can come in as a panelist. Hi there guys. I'm sorry, I don't want to keep you. I just had a technical question. And I introduced myself. My name is Maya. I'm the director of development and co-director of finance at correct stores. I just wanted, I had a clarifying question about the funding cycle because you guys have been talking about it as a two year grant, but the budget that we submitted was 18 months. So I wanted to kind of check in and just clarify that. Yeah. So DCD wants a safeguard to know that all the money could be spent in two years. So they really were asking for an 18 month implementation window knowing that the program itself may be two years. So you could take, we have to spend most likely 80 or 90% of the funding within 18 months. And then we have the ability to spend the remainder between 18 and 24 months. But you know, DC really wants to know that the activities will get started and be spent down consistently. So typically we'll enter into a contract then for a two year period. And if you spend your money down, you can spend it down in the first six months, but it's a two year program. So you're still going to have to submit quarterly reports, you know, for two years because it's a two year contract and activity. So, you know, I think the 18 month implementation budget was really a safeguard to know that the, you know, it looks like it's feasible to be completed within the grant period. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, no, thanks. That's, we often get that question. Yeah, great. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm actually, I'm going to head out, but thank you so much for deciding to fund us this year. Have a good night. Good night. All right. We're good. Yeah, I think we're good. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bon appetit. Thanks. Let's see what they made from you upstairs.